‘Campaigns against “Blackness”’ focuses on the 2008 Democratic presidential primary waged by
Barack Obama and the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial race run by Deval Patrick. It explores racial
bias expressed against and by African-American males seeking high office. In these campaigns, the
convergence of racial uplift and multicultural democracy manifests in mandates against blackness
represented as criminality and political incivility. Historically, US anti-black anima forged tropes of
‘criminality’ and ‘incivility’ that demonized blacks as unsuitable for full citizenship. Today, the new black candidates successfully deflect these tropes, in part, by redeploying them against non-elites, and anti-racist discourse and activism.